Is Vince McMahon Ready to Tap Out?

Vince McMahon was once tossed into a grave and almost buried alive by the Undertaker. But that’s nowhere near as bad as the year he’s having now.

The burial, of course, was staged, while the agony of 2020 is very real. The coronavirus pandemic has temporarily taken down the business of live sports — both real and fake. That’s left McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. to hold matches in empty arenas, making the spectacle feel even more theatrical than sports-like, with dramatic monologues delivered directly to the camera instead of to the shouting fans that normally line the stands. Meanwhile, McMahon’s XFL football league, which he rebooted earlier this year, had to cancel the rest of its season. XFL is privately held by McMahon; however, shares of WWE have plunged more than 40% since December.

McMahon, the 74-year-old chairman and CEO of WWE, is now looking to free up funds without relinquishing his control over the wrestling empire. On Tuesday, the company disclosed that McMahon entered into a prepaid variable forward contract, which essentially functions as a cash advance from a bank. The way it works is, McMahon agrees to eventually sell some of his shares at some future date — March 2024, in this case — receiving the money now, but without having to actually turn over the stock or pay taxes on the sale yet.

According to Bloomberg News’s Drew Singer, the bank was Morgan Stanley and the deal priced 2.26 million shares at $38 apiece, representing more than $80 million in freed-up liquidity. In the meantime, McMahon gets to collect the usual dividends on those shares, and he can keep the holdings by settling the contract for cash. The agreement also doesn’t affect McMahon’s other 25 million or so class B shares, which represent just over 70% of the company’s total voting power.

Even before the coronavirus began sweeping through the U.S., WWE was having a tough year, amid a shrinking number of subscribers to its streaming-TV service, WWE Network, and setbacks with international distribution deals...More?

source: washingtonpost.com